Beirut to Jerusalem

¶ … Beirut...to Now book review of Thomas Friedman's classic work of political journalism From Beirut to Jerusalem

Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem was written in 1989, after the author's tenure as the New York Times correspondent in Beirut. He was the first Jewish correspondent to the region, and it was considered, at the time, a daring act for this paper to engage in such a 'statement.' Friedman's balanced and personally revealing, soul-searching analysis in this text is a testimony to the fact that, no matter how much criticism has been leveled at this paper by other aspects of the media since, the New York Times certainly made the right decision in picky Friedman to ask the needed, probing questions about the violence transpiring in the region at the time. He emerges as both unbiased and likeable in his self-presentation.

Of course, the book written long before today's current climate of heightened awareness of terrorism's impact upon the West at home. Thus, it functions more as a snapshot of history, rather than as a living picture of today's current events and concerns. But the political rubrics and analysis applied by the author to the civil war in Beirut that was transpiring all around him, even infiltrating his own hotel at some points, remains compelling from a political as well as a human, narrative point-of-view.

Friedman wrote his book as a challenge to conventional assumptions about the inevitably polarized nature of the Middle East. What makes the Middle East both similar and unique as a region in the world, he asks? Why does it appear so inscrutable to outsiders, and why has it become so modernized, yet retains so many divisive and polarizing aspects in its religious attitudes? Why did Lebanon fall so far, and so fast into a state of seemingly inevitable civil war -- yet no one saw this war coming, and how long it would last, until it was too late?

Beirut provided, for Friedman, a particularly striking 'test case' for analyzing the tribal nature of Middle Eastern politics, given that nation's severity of civil decomposition, over the course of a fourteen year civil war that laid the city to waste with organized terrorism, with invasions from Syria and Israel, and with constant guerrilla and militia-driven terrorist outbreaks of violence. But Friedman points out that Beirut, contrary to American opinion, was not a wholly ancient city in its civil and religious attitudes -- the paradox of Beirut was that it was modern as well as ancient in attitudes and composition. It was as diverse as America, one could say, yet it could not sustain such ethnic and religious plurality, peacefully, in a Middle Eastern context of tribal warfare and hatred. It was an experiment of inclusion of Muslims, Jews, and Christians that had apparently, miserably failed.

Also, although Beirut was in a state of constant civil war, once upon a time it was a place of nightclubs and golf courses, where people lived in a place of relative harmony, despite ethnic and religious division. And although "outsiders looking at Beirut only though newspaper photographs and 60-second television news clips might have thought life in the city was one massacre after another, from sunrise to sunset," in fact "it wasn't. In fact, the explosions of violence, while often indiscriminate, were usually sporadic and not sustained." (30)

In short, war torn Beirut was both a horrible place, where random deaths and kidnappings occurred so frequently, victims did not even bother to cry out for help, but society still functioned, in its fashion, and people still went about ordinary, daily existences. "We even had Gloria Gaynor come sing in 1980. She sang, 'I Will Survive,'" said one nightclub owner of the period. "It was really fantastic." (33) in fact, residents of the city's mental hospitals seemed to grow more functional and cheerful, as if savoring the few and precious outbreaks of normalcy, that occurred enough to sustain most of the populace, psychologically, before they had to dodge bullets and fear for their lives as the next wave of political turmoil took over.

Thus, one striking aspect of Friedman's narrative is the psychological window it provides on a national population whom, no matter what their ethnic or religious orientation, no matter what 'side' they are on, are under extreme stress -- for fourteen years. All engage in "rational" explanations to explain why they are still alive, why it is not only "callous fates" that protects them. (37) This psychological window is revealing, funny and tragic, but humanizes the Lebanese Arabs and Christians.

These people, the author suggests, are not wholly alien to us, culturally and nationalistically -- they are human, and they are we. This exists as an important reminder after the events of September 11th and the often indiscriminate demonizing of Arabs as Islamic extremists in the American right-wing press. Not all Arabs are extremists, and not all extremists are Muslims, Friedman shows, even in a society falling apart in a state of civil war. And also, Muslims themselves are divided into Shiite and Sunni factions, and many dictators of the Middle East -- such as Saddam Hussein are in fact secular, rather than sacred in their orientation and in the ways they claim power and dominance over their people.

This call for empathy and humanization of the Lebanese and other Arab peoples does not deny the distinct nature of Middle East politics, what Friedman calls 'Hama Rules," referring to the Syrian leader's decimation and leveling of a town within his own nation of a populace opposed to his rule. "I think the best way to understand what happened in Hama is to understand that politics in the Middle East is a combination of three different political traditions all operating at the same time." (88) Middle Eastern politics is always combination, Friedman suggest, of the ancient and the modern -- it is always about factionalism and alliances, rather than the nation-state and any unified distillation of political philosophy.

The first and oldest of these is tribe like politics...all bound together by a tribe-like spirit of solidarity...a mutual loyalty that takes precedence over allegiances to the wider national community or nation state." (87) Thus, the dissolution of Lebanon, a modern nation-state is explained, as it becomes a series of fiefdoms and gang like rivalries -- as well as the contemporary allegiance of the Saudi Ben Laden to Afghanistan fundamentalist groups (87) "In such a lonely world," as the desert, "the only way to survive was by letting others know that if they violated you in any way, you would make them pay, and pay dearly," (88) Thus, the bloody, perhaps uniquely bloody nature and enclosed, realistic and vengeance driven nature of Middle Eastern politics is explained by geography, climate and by history as much as religion and sociology. "In the modern Middle East," the authoritarian tradition of leadership has survived in both its forms -- the "softer Ottoman approach and the more brutal, un-Islamic, Abul-Abbas the Blood letter variety." (95)

What to make of Yassir Arafat, then, who sprung from this city where Muslims, Jews, and Christians attempted to live together? Arafat might be the quintessential representation of the divisive nature of the Middle East, not just because of the tensions his presence manifests between Israelis and Palestinians, but also within the torn Palestinian community, chronicled by Friedman. Arafat, by attempting to be all things to all people, managed to eke out his own personal and political survival and viability as a leader, but without coherently uniting his people. This helps explain the failure of Arafat to broker a peace deal, long after this book was written, and why the right wing in Israel came to power again, creating further tensions in the community.